Sam Morsy splits the readers after F365 ‘virtue signalling nonsense’

Sam Morsy dominates the Mailbox as the right come out in support of a Muslim because that’s how the ‘anti-woke’ agenda works now.

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Coming down on the side of Sam Morsy
The progressive left are so tolerant and so kind and empathetic… until somebody doesn’t share their opinion.

Look at the hatred on the pro-Palestinian and trans-activists’ faces when they are demonstrating. See how David Tickner writes about Sam Morsy’s decision not to wear a certain captain’s armband.

All of a sudden, Morsy’s freedom of choice has vanished, because his choice doesn’t suit Tickner’s world view. Now, Morsy is homophobic, intolerant and misguided. How simplistic. I would never have dreamt of kneeling for BLM. I suppose Tickner would brand me racist for daring not to follow the sheep.

Well done Sam Morsy. Let the empathetic ignorant abuse you and try and wreck your career. History will prove you right, when all this virtue signalling nonsense has long been forgotten.
G Thomas, The Netherlands

…Dave Tickner really has come up with a very muddled argument regarding Sam Morsy’s decision. He writes:

‘Almost every religious person of every stripe picks and chooses which of their faiths apparently inalienable beliefs and tenets apply to them.’

And apparently Dave, you’re going to do that for Sam? On what authority? Are you an imam? I’m an atheist, but Morsy’s interpretation of his religion is between his soul and God. It’s not for you to decide how he should interpret the faith he was born into. It then gets even more muddled when Dave tries to grapple with James McClean not wearing a poppy:

‘Whether or not you agree with them, they are there in black and white. Morsy has no such basis for his stance on a rainbow armband.’

Given it’s in the Koran as a sin, it is literally there in black and white.

Also, mentioning gambling logos is a very poor attempt at an equivalence, given these are sponsorships and so the player cannot refuse if he wants to turn out for the club.

And by the way Dave, there’s nothing “woke” about your article. It does, however, reek of colonial assumptions.
Mithran Somasundrum (LFC)

…A response to Neil Raines’ mail, if I may.

Neil says that Morsy is lying about his reasons for not wearing the armband. He’s probably right, wouldn’t surprise me at all. Neil then says it was Morsy ‘personal beliefs’ which Neil then proceeds to tell us all that those personal beliefs are wrong. So personal beliefs are only acceptable when they align with yours? Does inclusivity not mean everyone is included? Including those people who don’t believe as you do?

See Neil, what you did – and what a lot of people seem to do these days – is discriminate against someone based on what they believe just because their opinion is opposite to yours.

Is there any proof that Morsy has ever treated anyone badly/differently because they’re part of the LGBT+ community? Apart from not wearing a rainbow armband, has he actively hurt or discriminated against anyone in that community? If not, I’d suggest that you stop forcing your beliefs onto others. Congratulations on being part of the problem.

FWIW If Morsy lied as Neil suggested, he’s a coward. Saka is an idiot for what he did.
Clive

The other side
I’m a nearly 50 year old gay and have enjoyed your site for what is probably half my lifetime and yes I remember look alikes and the red and green color way.

I’ve always been personally thrilled that my favorite sports site and first reading every morning has consistently charted such an erudite and eloquent passage through the seemingly endless intersections of social, economic and political issues with our sport.

I just wanted to say thank you for pointing out the utter nonsense with the Ipswich statement. You pose the question of the how the LGBT Ipswich employee may feel and I’m sure not good. But I will tell you how a gay F365 reader felt – f**king brilliant.

What’s interesting in Morsy and so many other similar cases is they choose to uphold only the religious beliefs that permit being mean to people. It’s more than the betting example you accurately illustrate, religion has always been synonymous with hypocrisy. It’s that time and time again Mr Morsy and his ilk make conscious, informed choices that they know contribute to more suicidal teenagers. But religion gives them a free pass and after all they were only gay suicides so you know wink wink not a big loss.

Anyway conversations for another day, cheers to you all, Merry Christmas and may God continue to bless Ruben Amorim.
Matt NY, (MUFC)

Dear Mr Guehi…
I can assure you that Jesus does not ‘love me’ in the way your protest over the armband is trying to convey.

Your condensatory message of ‘Jesus loves you’ is a long held religious reaction to being gay. That Jesus still loves you enough so long as you repent your gayness. If only I were so straight that Jesus loved me the most.

If you don’t understand why writing over the rainbow armband with religious text could be offensive; religions around the world have killed people for a lot less than simply declaring who they love regardless of gender.

Now I understand that here is not the place for this discussion. Of course it isn’t, football is unfortunately too tribal for this kind of discourse.

However, if you (a football club captain), cannot wear a simple rainbow armband due to religious beliefs, then do you know what; surrender the armband for one fucking week to someone else.
Will (it took a lot to not swear more)

Ruud awakening
Don’t know how many people saw the Leicester-West Ham game last night, but Ruud van Nistelrooy distinguished himself with a very effective tactical tweak.

Kasey McAteer started the match at right wing, and although he was getting the ball in good positions on the counter, he didn’t seem to know what to do with it. At the interval Van Nistelrooy moved him to the left wing, with Facundo Buonanotte switching over from left to right. McAteer immediately looked more comfortable, among other things sending Jamie Vardy free with a neat pass. Later in the half later he made a good run, Buonanotte found him with a crossfield ball, and he played a perfect pass to Bilal El Khannouss for Leicester’s second goal. Nicely done.
Peter G, Pennsylvania, USA (maybe it is the best league in the world)

Why didn’t they treat Man City like a serial killer?
I still don’t understand why these charges against City are taking so long.

The Everton and Nottingham Forest ones were almost done overnight!

Wouldn’t the FA have been better taking the Serial Killer approach?

EG You try them on the ones you KNOW they are guilty of (eg off book payments to previous managers etc)

And ask after the verdict if they want to take any more into consideration before sentences are served.

This approach would have been much quicker and the FA could focus on a few charges and not ruminate on 115 for ever.
Neil, LFC, USA

We deserve better punditry
Watching the Liverpool vs City game, the in-game commentary, the post-game review and listening to several podcasts really shows how woeful the bulk of the commentary and punditry truly is.

The commentators come to the game armed with a pile of prepped stats to supposedly add interest to the game. – “The last time x took a 59th minute corner kick away from home was…” – but are mostly shite and easily found online. A new commentator podcast on BBC is a shameless attempt at bigging up their job – their notebooks, trip travails, etc – but it also highlights how little they genuinely add to the experience. Don’t get me wrong, they all seem like nice guys, but let’s not pretend they add to anyone’s understanding or enjoyment of the game – before, during and especially after.

Then we have the immediate post-game reviews, almost exclusively ex-players – incredibly, completely over-the-top, palsy walsy buddies. Former ‘enemies’ now all guffawing together. In most cases, it makes one wonder how they managed to play the game, as they offer little tactical insight. It tends to the emotional, ‘let me tell you what’s like behind the curtain as an ex-player’ and then blathering yet more trite stuff any of us would have imagined. “They’ll feel bad about that…”

Then we get to the later, supposedly more detailed analysis reviews. Always wearing running shoes, slacks and a sporty top and usually standing up in front of a screen to impress us. While they provide some insight, it typically revolves around a mistake or two by an individual or group of players that led to a goal or pointed out something extraordinary from the attacking team. But rarely anything we wouldn’t have spotted had we not spent time with some video recording gurus able to give us access to the game video. “Joe left a large gap that allowed the winger to…” However, it rarely provides a proper analysis of what the manager’s strategy really was and how it worked or failed.

We have to wait until much later when we get a better analysis from the deeper thinkers who may write for the newspapers, appear on football podcasts, better online football sites, and, funnily enough, online ‘amateurs.’

READ: 16 Conclusions from Liverpool 2-0 Man City: is there even going to be a title race at all?

This was most evident when the majority opinion of the first three categories believed that City played much better against Liverpool in the second half and were turning things around. Stunning.

Pep blinked first with his team. Playing very narrow, most likely to prevent Liverpool playing out through the middle. However, Liverpool’s greater athleticism, work on and off the ball, and Slot’s setting up of the team to take advantage of Pep’s philosophy of attempting to overload in defence and midfield, carved City open. Players making runs to pull City players out of position, Diaz in the middle to harry and make it difficult to track, finding space, willing to risk an aggressive forward pass, and persistent pressing blew City away.

Eventually, Pep changed the plan and put on the two wingers most thought he would have started with, but Slot matched this by changing tactics and getting Liverpool to wait, play deeper and play longer balls over the top of the City midfield into the gap behind, which constantly caused problems. City seemed pretty subdued and offered little pressing and running.

It must have been frustrating for City fans to see a City player like Foden, standing in the middle of 3 Liverpool players no more than 2 feet away, and calling for a sideways pass to his feet. To then pass it back as there was nowhere to go. This, this second-half performance, bereft of ideas, lack of running, lack of ideas, was what got those pundits proclaiming City are turning a corner. Strewth!
Paul McDevitt

A Premier League sanity check
Football is not predictable – and never will be – we can think we have things nailed down but far too often, things go ahead and happen. It’s why we watch, we watch for Las Palmas raining on Barca’s 125th Birthday parade. We watch for Tottenham going to the Etihad and taking 0-4 blood from City. We watch for “Its up for grabs now!” and “Aguerrooooooooo!!”. We watch for Greece winning a European Championship. For Leicester, for RANIERI’S LEICESTER. (Not all these things are equal footing, obviously, just some recent and/or notable examples)

Often, and in the majority of cases, the expected outcome happens but importantly. not. always.

Liverpool: July 2017 – January 2021
130 Premier League Games
10 Losses
ZERO Losses at Anfield

Liverpool: The following 12 games from 4th January 2021
12 Premier League Games
8 Losses
6 Losses at Anfield

Liverpool: 8th March 2021 to May 2022
48 Premier League Games
2 Losses
ZILCH Losses at Anfield

The above highlights nice and simply a club who can have 12 losses from 178 games in two spells, which sandwiches a period of 8 losses in 12 games with 6 of those being at home. In that instance, it was mostly an injury ravaging and strange choices, but it was still such a massive flip-180 for two months – the amount of losses, the home devastation – that it bares scrutiny that anything can happen in 90 mins, over two legs, in a tournament or, especially, over the course of a season. Otherwise why watch? Are we really such the tiktok-generation that having the patience to let things play out is an impossibility?

It’s good to be confident, and its good to have faith, but never, ever, pretend you can see the future. Hold your Gravenberches tight, because nothing is ever guaranteed in life. Sorry, kids.
Harold Emmett Hooler
P.S: to paraphrase big Johnny Lennon – “Football upsets are what happen when you’re busy predicting champions”

Boom
To answer Gary AVFCs question, Philogene is not my lover.
Sorry not sorry.
Matt